Chefs all over the world can count on great taste for perfect chocolate delights, day after day

Our love for the Finest Belgian Chocolate has no boundaries

Chefs all over the world can count on great taste for perfect chocolate delights, day after day

Delight your fans with the Finest Belgian Chocolate taste

Crafted in one of Belgium’s oldest cocoa roasteries and made from the best, sustainable cocoa beans of West Africa, Callebaut’s Finest Belgian Chocolate is here for you. To surprise you with world class workablity. And to spoil the taste buds of your fans with the chocolate taste they love so much. Maybe that’s why it’s many chefs n°1 preferred chocolate.

Pursuing great taste, from one generation to the next

Bringing superbly tasting chocolate to every chef and supporting you in creating wonderful chocolate delights for your customers: that’s what we pursue to do. And it’s what we do best. We call it chocolate love. The first seed of that love was already planted in 1911, in a small town in Belgium called Wieze.

From a small country with a love for great chocolate

Why we roast the whole cocoa bean and nothing but the whole bean? Why we refine our ingredients in 5 stages? And why we conch no longer than necessary? Because it creates the taste of the Callebaut’s Finest Belgian Chocolate. The taste many chefs prefer. Discover our secrets.

01/11
The beans are shipped to Belgium

Well fermented and dried cocoa beans are shipped to Belgium. Their journey lasts several weeks and travels across wild seas and along rugged coasts. When they finally arrive at our warehouse, the beans are inspected one last time to grade their quality.

02/11
Know your beans

If the iconic Callebaut taste has hardly changed over the decades, then we owe it largely to our Beanologist. He meticulously tastes, lists, selects and documents batches of cocoa beans coming in from all over the world – also new varieties. He builds the cocoa library that inspires our Master Blender.

03/11
The secret Wieze blend: the start of great taste

It’s the blend of beans that will define the taste of your chocolate. Our Master Blender mainly selects West African beans to create the body of each Finest Belgian Chocolate recipe. Fine flavour beans from South America and Asia add fruitiness, acidity and playful top notes.

04/11
A delicious scent all over Wieze: we’re roasting the whole beans

Roasting is a crucial step to bring the flavor precursors in the cocoa bean to life. We’re one of the few chocolate makers to still roast the whole cocoa beans in their natural shell with hot air, and debacterise them with steam. It guarantees mildly and evenly roasted cocoa beans, from the outside to the core, whilst awakening their full flavor potential. No steam or moist can touch the kernel of the bean to preserve their powerful taste and all aromatic notes.

05/11
Let the wind blow

After roasting, the beans are broken and brought into a wind tunnel where the nibs and the shells are separated - even the smallest pieces. This way, we retain pure cocoa nibs with no shell particles. 100% pure nibs mean 100% pure taste to go on to the next step: making the cocoa liquor.

06/11
Grinding finer and finer to create the finest cocoa liquor

In the first stage, the cocoa nibs are ground into cocoa liquor. It is further refined in multiple steps until it is extremely fine. The result is a dark, pure and brute cocoa liquor, containing all the flavour notes: the solid, intense cacao body and the acidic top notes. It’s the heart and soul of every chocolate recipe.

07/11
Enriching the recipe with the best local ingredients

Belgium tastes great. That ’s why we select – as much as we can – the best sugars and flaky milk powders from farms and suppliers in Belgium. We believe that local ingredients do justice to the taste of your Finest Belgian Chocolate.

08/11
5 roll refining process to bring you silky, smooth chocolate

To create the sensational, round and silky mouthfeel of your chocolate, we press and refine all ingredients until each particle is smaller than the distance between the taste buds. When the chocolate melts in your mouth, it will release its whole flavour to the palate, instead of the flavours of its separate ingredients.

09/11
It’s time to unravel the myth of conching

Conching is the art of creating harmonious taste. Our Master Concher kneads the chocolate for hours to ripen the taste and have unwanted acidic flavours evaporate. He takes precisely the right time to obtain the perfect balance: long enough to create roundness in taste and short enough to preserve the desired aromatic top notes, such as fruitiness or refreshing acids. The end result is the signature Callebaut® taste, with a full cocoa body and fine flavours.

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A packaging that protects great taste

Taste created with the greatest precision deserves to be preserved with the greatest care. To present the unrivalled flavours of Callebaut over and over again, we designed a premium packaging, guarding all the qualities of your chocolate and guaranteeing great workability.

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And now your chocolate is ready for your chocolate stories

Each and every day you can rely on Callebaut® to support you with great workability and to delight your customers with the reward of great taste.

Supporting cocoa farmers

Finest Cocoa Beans - the start of a great story

The Finest Belgian Chocolate needs the finest cocoa beans. Today and tomorrow. We believe that we all together, you – chefs – and your customers can all collaborate with cocoa farmers in West Africa – one of the main sources of our high-grade cocoa beans. For every pack of Finest Belgian Chocolate you buy, we reinvest a part in sustainable cocoa farming through the Cocoa Horizons Foundation. This non-profit organisation monitors the most urgent needs in West-Africa and coordinates the sustainable projects we all together contribute to.